We don't have a TV yet ... in our new home. Our old TV was part of the deal with the folks who bought our house. We'll get a new one early next year.

Debbie and I have a tradition of watching some old classic Christmas movies during the holidays, and last night we wanted to do that again. We have the movies on DVD. We have a laptop computer (my MacBook Pro). We have a USB DVD drive that works on the laptop. All we had to do was to find all this stuff, rig up a Rube Goldberg-esque set of cables, and then we could watch the movie while we're snuggled up in bed.

The main challenge turned out to be finding the DVD. Our DVD collection was distributed over five moving boxes. Three of the boxes we found quickly, searched through them, and ... didn't find the DVD we wanted (“It’s a Wonderful Life”). So we started searching through the box piles. In the last box pile we searched through, we found the two missing DVD moving boxes. In the last box we searched, in the last few DVDs, we found it.

And we watched the movie as planned, and as is our tradition. I love that movie...

Merry Christmas! It's a white Christmas for us – we got about 2" of fresh snow last night, and cold days (below freezing) are forecast for at least a week. The weatherman is predicting snow all day today and into the night, so by tomorrow we should have a thick layer of that white stuff around here.

Losing Lea a few days ago dampened our spirits here, but we have a great deal to be merry about this year. We're all together again, after 8 months of me living in an under-construction house 850 miles away from the rest of my family. Our new home is beautiful, and getting better every day as we unpack and continue making improvements. Our animals are settled in and acting like this is their new home, too. Mo'i, our 16 year old male field spaniel, is doing much better after some minor surgery earlier this week, to remove an infected tooth and a couple of small oral growths. He also had bladder infection, which antibiotics knocked down almost instantly. We're surrounded by friendly neighbors who have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome here in our new home community.

So there are lots of smiles and good cheer here, though punctuated by moments of sadness. When I walked the dogs this morning, I took Mo'i out by himself, instead of with Lea, his usual walkie companion. He snuffled away happily in the snow (he's discovered voles) while I stood in the swirling, falling snow and shed a few tears for our old girl.

Right now, as I type these words, I'm sitting in our kitchen's dining area. Around me are three happy and content dogs, all sacked out on their little doggie beds. Behind them is a window looking to the north, over a scene that could be on a Currier & Ives print: snowy fields, big fluffy flakes gently wafting down, and the sky lightening as daybreak approaches. I took the photo above right out of that window.